Localism, Immigration, Economic Growth and Organics

The event that prompted this post happened a few weeks ago at the Mountain View farmers market. I had been meaning to write about it for a while and finally got it in a publishable form today.

Before I recount the event, a short history of organic agriculture:

For most of human history all of our produce and meat was organic. We were short, stunted and disease-ridden. Then modern, large-scale agriculture was developed. And most people stopped starving as children. Next thing you know we have 7 billion people on this earth.

Which is why I tell this story:

I was in line at the market, waiting to buy a head of califlour. The booth was Swank Farms from Watsonville, CA. A fine farm, offering nice produce for fair prices. At least as far as a kid from Carrot Top Farm's fecund lands thinks being charged for anything veggie-wise is fair. I was indignant about the price I got charged for my cranberry beans at the previous stand but sucked it up and tried to remind myself that the ability to pick near-unlimited amounts of fantastic produce for free is not a normal state of being. But I digress...

The customer ahead of me was up and stepped to the scale, handing his haul to the farmer.

"Hola, como estas," he said to the vendor. Without missiong a beat, the farmer replied with a "Namaste," and they both chuckled.

The notable thing here was that the customer was Indian, the farmer Mexican and based on their bantering regularly conducted business. Based on their fairly heavy accents, presumably immigrants. For some reason this got me thinking about the fact that industrial agriculture in the west has helped the creation of a society rich enough that it would attract immigrants from other lands who end up at a pricey farmers market where most of the vendors are organic. I think this really illustrates the limits of the local/organic movement that is so popular in northern California.

To feed a growing world population, and allowing enough people in developing nations to get off farms for economic growth to happen, large scale, non-organic farming is essential. It's only a rich society (and an agreeable climate like northern California's) that allows the luxury of choosing to eat locally and organically. That or you are a subsistence farmer forced by circumstances to live that way.

There is nothing I love better than great, super-fresh veggies grown right down the road. But significant parts of the local food movement seem to believe it is realistic that we go back to having two thirds of the population farming. Feeding the world is going to require pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and GMO crops. That's why I follow this rule - don't be too local and fuck organics unless they taste better.